Over the Edge:
Boards X and Motorcycle Mayhem X (2003)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Produced & Directed by Jim Duffner and Phil Gibson
Starring Tony Hawk, Andy MacDonald, Kris Markovich, Terje Haakonsen, Blaise Rosenthal, Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Set Enslow, Tommy "The Cat" Clowers, Chris Carr, Bubba Blackwell, Dana Creech, and Joey Cisco

Features:

• X-Facts
  
• Xtreme fX digi-pix still gallery
  

Released by: Monterey Media.
Rating: NR
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; they appear in their original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: Skip it unless you're really into extreme sports

So, you've seen these guys before. They're all over various flavors of ESPN, leaping into the air on dirtbikes or careening around a giant two-way ramp on skateboards. Hell, they even inspired a feature film or two. And since these extreme athletes are total whackos and do crazy, crazy things--they normally have a crew of cameramen hanging around. These cameramen are there to either capture amazing physical antics or make a bundle off of one these fools killing themselves--which, I can never decide. So, here we have a collection of very short video clips of them doing their best and most daring stunts.

Let me state this up front. I'm too old for this...um...stuff. If I were to even look at a skateboard or snowboard the wrong way, bruises would start showing up all over my body. That having been said, I have the upmost respect for the kinds of stunts that these guys are pulling and the amount of training and body awareness that goes into making it all happen. I think that the amount of pain they subject themselves to trying to perfect these stunts is absolutely insane.

Now, that disclaimer in place: these videos are only about forty-five minutes long each and really are just music videos of a different sort. They contain the music of some bands that I'm not really familiar with, mostly because it's not the kind of music that I really enjoy listening to. Be prepared for a bunch of shaky video closeups of these guys' boards and bikes, because that's a lot of what you get. Most of it looks like it was shot by some guys with camcorders and not done by professional cinematographers with professional equipment. For something like that, you'd have to check out Ultimate X or something similar.

The DVDs leave a lot to be desired, even beyond the video quality department. I have to give them credit for trying to put together some kind of special features, but they ones they give us don't really succeed. On the Boards DVD, they have a section of bonus material called Xtreme fX digi-pix (no, really, it's spelled just like that) which really just boils down to a slideshow of still shots of these guys doing their thing, but you get both before Photoshop and after Photoshop alteration. The alterations look like the kind of things that were thrown together very quickly without a lot of preparation or skull sweat involved in them. Then they have four pages of "X-Facts" which are statistics regarding how popular these extreme sports are. Some of the information that is presented is quite in-depth, even if it is just a little boring, being just text-on-screen.

Motorcycle Mayhem X doesn't present us with much more in the way of bonus material. All we get on this disc is more "X-Facts", this time about motorcycling, natch. A lot of the same information about the "Official X Games" is presented on both discs. An easy bonus for these discs would have been some interviews with the maniacs who are featured on the main presentations, even if they were conducted via camcorder--but alas, no.

These are not really worth the rentals unless you are really into these types of extreme sports. The discs don't do anything to convince anyone to become a fan if they're not already. And even if you are into them, I don't believe that the amount of material would make them worth the purchase.